Archive for the ‘Battlegrounds’ Category

Stupid random battleground thingamajig. It stuck me in my least favorite – to date – battleground today, Eye of the Storm. We got our heads handed to us, which is par for the course in EotS matches I’ve been in. Once it was over, I re-queued, and guess where I ended up.

Eye of the freaking Storm. This time the match was almost half over, with the horde again overrunning the map. I’m tired of getting ganged up on in these matches, and I’m also sick and tired of the jerk in every match who blames everyone else for any mistakes and seems to think that all the other players are holding him down. He can do no wrong in his mind, and he pisses me off. Someone in each random battleground always fills that roll, and I’m tired of listening to them.

Will I quit the random battlegrounds due to these struggles? Probably not. It’s a good time waster and when things do go well, it’s allot of fun. We’ll see what happens in the near future.

Bored this morning, I queued for another random battleground and landed in Strand of the Ancients. Again, I seemed to be a prime target, with the Horde stopping everything else to kill me. I must have some kind of ‘Kill Me Please’ sign on my forehead in Horde-speak. Overall though, I was wicked this match. I landed in the top 10 in killing blows (9), top 15 in honorable kills (62) and damage done (429.1k), and died only five times. Oh, and those ranks? That was Horde and Alliance combined. As far as just the Alliance goes, I was #5 in damage done and #1 in honorable kills. First in Honorable Kills! That’s something I’m proud of. I also got the Drop it Now and Ancient Protector achievements while there as we won the match. Not a bad morning.

Today was near the end of the Call to Arms: Alterac Valley battleground weekend, so I opted to give it a go. What I found was my favorite battleground yet. It’s tough, no doubt, with 40 players per side creating chaos, but it’s also the easiest to understand for me. It reminds me allot of the Battlefield series of games in style. You eliminate your opponents reinforcements via either killing players or taking control of territory to choke their supply.

I had a mediocre match, partially because it looked like everyone wanted me dead for whatever reason. About halfway through the match, anytime I’d show my head near a scrum, the Horde would drop what they were doing and pile on me. What, did I look like easy prey? I wasn’t, mind you – I nabbed the Damage Control achievement and was in the top 15 in both honorable kills (85) and damage done (430.5k) for he Alliance. I also assaulted a graveyard to help our war efforts. We won too, which was a nice bonus. An odd note is that I now have 50 Arena Points. What the heck do I with these, and why give them to players for fighting in battlegrounds? The cheapest things I can find that are buyable with Arena Points are worth a couple thousand Arena Points, so doling them out in 25 per day is kind of stingy. Of course, I’m of the opinion that they should not be part of the Random Battleground deal anyway. BGs =/= Arenas.

I queued for a random battleground and as luck would have it, I wound up in Eye of the Storm again. I was again – as in my Arathi Basin battle – a little killing machine. I’d bought up some Furious Gladiator’s Scaled Shoulders and entered battle in my prot PvP spec. I ended up with six killing blows, 57 honorable kills and only five deaths. At one point, we were defending the mage’s tower and I ended basically tanking the horde. The horde all wanted me dead for whatever reason, so the healers kept me alive while our DPS (myself included) dropped them. It was impressive. If only we’d won.

I logged in this afternoon, post 3.3.3, and turned my handful of honor marks from the battlegrounds into emblems that I could then use to earn honor. Unfortunately, they could only be collected in stacks of 10. Therefore, everyone was collecting 10 emblems and converting them one by one, over and over again. Of course, some dumb ass thought this collection of players was the perfect place to pull out a train set. Jerk.

I then queued for my first random battleground, landing in Arathi Basin.

Bad memories of the Eye of the Storm battleground match I was in came flooding back. Like that match, the Alliance team was way overmatched. We lost, big time, but I had the best round this time of anyone on my side. With 9 killing blows and 31 honorable kills, I was the leading killer for the Alliance. Of course, two paladins on the horde combined for 34 killing blows and 114 honorable kills, dwarfing anything I did. I helped kill them each twice, though – not important, but fun nonetheless. I only died three times this battle, versus the 11 I had in that earlier EotS match. One anecdote from this match was myself, heading up two other paladins, convincing the two killer Horde pallys I mentioned earlier to hesitate instead of charging in, and when at last they did we killed them both. It was satisfying and I got both killing blows. Bonus!

Today I opted to join a battle in the Eye of the Storm battleground, and failed miserably. Oh, I got in a battle, I just died a resounding 11 times, second worst on the Alliance. This is how I saw most of the battle. I’d res, run to a fight, and die. I was good for 52 honorable kills, but I couldn’t hold my own when I’d get ganged up on constantly. In fact, my entire group sucked. To wit:

This was actually how most of us saw the battle. We had no chance. Apparently the Horde on my battlegroup are way better then the Horde on my server.

In response to the overwhelming success of the Random Dungeon system, Blizzard is unveiling the Random Battleground system in the forthcoming patch 3.3.3. I’ve only partaken in Isle of Conquest from patch 3.2 and most recently Strand of the Ancients, but I would like to try some of the older ones. My observation however, is that the battlegrounds are – by large – empty There’s not a huge contingent of battleground instances running these days, at least not on my battlegroup. This new Random Battleground system could change that. With the ease of the Random Dungeon setup and streamlined PvP rewards, this could make battlegrounds a big thing like they used to be when they were first introduced. I hope so, and I’m interested in the influx of newcomers to battlegrounds like there were to dungeons. Like with the dungeon system, those newcomers would include the likes of me, so I’m looking forward to seeing if the tolerance that eventually developed among these new-age PUGs shows up in battlegrounds. You had to come to terms that some folks – like, say, me – weren’t experienced dungeon delvers, so the hard-core instance runs of the past are often left at the door for random dungeons and heroics. That makes for a lower-pressure environment, and that makes more people take part. That, to me, is the big bonus of these new systems. More people = more fun in an MMO.

Gav stormed the beach in the Strand of the Ancients battleground for the first time last night. As you can see here, we took the keep in less then four minutes. I took allot of hits, but I never died thanks to timely heals by myself and some healers we had. I was near death only twice, and my bubble saved me both times. My arch-nemesis on this night was a Tauren druid named Marburg. This pain in the butt and I fought to a standstill about five times. I’d pound him, he’d go tree and run, and then come back for more, where I’d pound him again, and the cycle continues.

I did finally kill him once after I finally got some help. A Tauren shaman and I also went head-to-head a number of times, with me winning two of the three fights (the third was a draw as I bubbled near death and he was run off by my allies). I was amazed how many times my Art of War proc’d here. I almost always had an instant cast Flash of Light or Exorcism ready. In the end, I did the third most damage on the Alliance and healed the fourth most, almost all on myself. Best of all I netted a couple killing blows, the second-most honorable kills and I never died. Go Gav!

Well, I won my first Isle of Conquest match today. Actually, that’s a lie. The Alliance won a match while I was there; I was no help. I got ganged up on by – no lie! – six hordies at once near the start, all of them after me alone. Later, there was an undead warlock at the top of one of our towers, burning the hell out of me while I tried to shoot his tanks with the turret. How inconsiderate. Couldn’t he see I was busy?! Anyway, I finally got un-busy (he killed the turret) and turned my attention to him. I swear he was cheating somehow. He had only slightly more HP then me, maybe a thousand or so, but he wasn’t taking any damage from my attacks. WTF?? I literally couldn’t hurt him. I’ve had the same problem was several different foes in IoC. Yesterday, a Draenei death knight and I chased a Tauren shaman all across the map, but we couldn’t kill him. We’d stun him, pin him, pound on him, and yet he’d take next to no damage. What. The. Hell?! He wasn’t using his totems because our battle took us all across the island, so how was he so damned immortal? *sigh*

Anyway, we won today, somehow, even though the Horde held most of the map. Don’t ask me how; I was in our keep, dead. I spent most of the match that way: rezzing in our keep’s graveyard. I did account for the second most Honorable Kills on the Alliance though, even though I had no killing blows. I guess that means that I was wearing everyone down but not finishing anybody. That’s no way to win.

Ok, my ambition to do a Path of the Paladin post has been overwritten – at least for now – by an infatuation with the Isle of Conquest battleground. It rocks. Period. It’s like a mini-Wintergrasp on steroids.

… ok, that may not have made allot of sense. What I meant was that it’s allot smaller and more concentrated then Wintergrasp, but the gameplay is amped up to an unbelievable degree. Flying battleships, rampant vehicles, multiple capture points that provide the factions with various bonuses… it’s great fun. I boarded the air ship on my second match (the first one lasted about four minutes due to a sudden server restart), and was watching people jump off. I watched, and saw that they got parachutes once they did, so I jumped too… and fell, and fell (“c’mon, a little help here?!” I was thinking), and finally *poof*, parachute time. I got an achievement for getting into the Horde’s courtyard without breaking down a gate, but we lost. In fact, I’ve not seen a victory yet. Seeing as how my server is more or less balanced in power in Wintergrasp – and maybe slightly tilted towards the Alliance – the other servers in my Battleground must have some kick-ass Horde. Either that or our Horde suck. One of the two.

Hi, I’m Alphasim . I’ve been playing World of WarCraft for four years now and my main is a level 85 human paladin named Gavelier. Gav features prominently here at Alazar so you'll get to know him and his guild.

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